


What If Jack Had Opened the Door?

by Smashbot



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Epikegster, Even Imaginary Pie Is Pretty Great, Kent Parson Is a Dick, M/M, Panic Attacks, Pie Makes Everything Better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 16:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7276153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smashbot/pseuds/Smashbot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you do when you overhear something you weren't supposed to hear? If you're Eric Richard Bittle, you try to make things right ... with baked goods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What If Jack Had Opened the Door?

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I'm not a therapist, although I do have an anxiety disorder and have had my fair share of panic attacks. Nothing in this frothy little story is intended to constitute advice on dealing with anxiety. If you're a fellow sufferer, definitely consult a mental health professional for help. Shrinks, man. They're the best. 
> 
> Also, the usual caveats apply: These guys aren't mine, and I'm super grateful to Ngozi for allowing us to play with them. Also, as well, I feel you should know that I'm posting this on the very day that we're getting an update of the comic, and I'm so excited, I can barely stand it. 
> 
> This isn't beta-ed, so let me know if you spot anything wonky. For example, I discovered during editing that if you do a search/replace for "Haus," in order to capitalize it, you wind up with fun new words like "exHausted." Ahem.

Realistically, Bitty knows that the whole Haus doesn't go silent when Kent Parson slams out of Jack's room, adjusts his snapback, and struts back down the hall. From his crouch on the floor, he can hear – for example – the groans of despair as Lardo demolishes more suckers at Flip-Cup and the susurrus of conversation of the EpiKegster crowd, so loud it's indistinct, not to mention the slightly tinny thump of someone's party playlist, finishing off the Haus speakers in the living room. 

Bitty's not exactly a big Maroon 5 fan – Adam Levine isn't his idea of a diva – but he has to say that the current track is appropriate. 

_Maybe you think that you can hide_  
_I can smell your scent for miles_  
_Just like animals_

Jack slams the door in his face.

Bitty stands, key in hand, and pauses with his knuckles an inch from Jack's door, momentarily paralyzed with indecision. 

A not-insignificant part of him wants to turn tail and run. If he doesn't say anything, it'll be like ... whatever happened ... never happened. He won't have been caught out, crouching outside Jack's door like he was snooping on his captain and an NHL player possibly getting to second base (or so) during an EpiKegster, the NHL player in question won't have said scathingly cruel things, and Jack won't have had an audience for what appears to be a pretty complicated domestic argument. Everyone's pride will be intact. Sort of. 

Except. 

Except that Bitty has only recently left behind a life where people pretended that it was possible to change reality by wishing real hard and looking at things selectively. He grew up with church ladies gossiping about each other's philandering spouses and pregnant daughters behind closed doors and serving up punch after services to the victims of their campaigns of gossip, all with sugary smiles and murmurs of "bless your heart." His own parents somehow managed to look at their tiny, figure-skating, Beyoncé-loving son, and see a football player who was going to pass on the Bittle genes the old-fashioned way. 

Stepping away from all that by coming out to Shitty – and then to Ransom and Holster, and then to the entire Samwell student body, for all intents and purposes – felt like stepping off a cliff and trusting the air to hold him up. When it did (when he didn't fall, when Shitty liked him anyway, when everything went on the same, except for one important difference, the fact that he could now be himself) he felt like the newly baptized claimed to feel: reborn. He's not going to start dragging people out of closets or telling off hypocrites at his mama's church, but he can't go back to pretending things are normal when they're not.

Also, he's pretty sure he hears someone crying on the other side of that door, and unless Jack's evening was even more interesting than Bitty thought, it's just Jack in there. 

So: he knocks.

At first, nothing. The party goes on under this feet; the sounds (crying? hiccuping? wheezing?) continue from the other side of Jack's door. 

"Jack," he calls out, softly. He knocks again. "It's just me. It's just Bitty."

"Bitty." Jack's voice sounds thick and muffled, like he's speaking through several layers of cloth or has the world's worst cold. 

"Jack, honey..." Bitty winces. The endearment just sort of slipped out. "Can you open this door? I don't wanna bother you. I just want to make sure you're OK."

More hiccuping noises. After a moment, the door swings open onto an apparently empty room. 

Bitty bolts through, as if sliding under a booby-trapped door in Indiana Jones, and peers around wildly. Then he spots Jack, curled up in the fetal position behind the door.

"Oh, Jack," he says, dropping to the floor.

"Close the door," Jack says. His face is so wet with tears, it looks like he's dunked his head in water. Also, there's something wrong with his breathing: there's a kind of stutter to each inhalation, like his body is resetting the circuit right after he starts to take a breath. He's hyperventilating, Bitty realizes.

"I can't ... feel my face," Jack says, grimacing. 

"WHAT? Oh my lord. Jack! Jack." Bitty looks around him helplessly, like a full crash cart will appear, straight out of a medical drama. "Are you having chest pain? Are you ... what ... are you laughing at me?"

"It's ... a panic attack," Jack says, trying to laugh and hyperventilate at the same time. "...should see ... your face..."

"Don't you dare chirp me at a time like this, Mr. Zimmermann," Bitty says, attempting sternness. It's hard, when he's mostly relieved. He doesn't exactly know what to do about a panic attack, either, but at least it's not likely to be fatal. Is it? "What can I do?"

"It's been ... a while," Jack says, laughter dying down. "I just need ... to breathe."

"Do you have medication?" 

"Not ... anymore."

Bitty winces, remembering the _Sports Illustrated_ article and the news reports and the stories he's heard around campus. Of course Jack doesn't have medication for this – not the fast-acting kind, anyway. The kind of guy who puts up a poster in his bedroom that reads "Be Better" doesn't give himself a chance to screw up again. 

"What can I do to help?" he asks.

Something flashes across Jack's face. Bitty doesn't quite catch it. Maybe Jack's considering something. In any case, he nods. "Sit with me," he says. 

Bitty scooches closer on the dusty wooden floor – but not too close. He's intensely aware of the fact that something happened with Parse and Jack this evening, and that he's had a lot to drink, and that Jack's large warm arm is inches from his as he sits beside him, against the wall. Jack doesn't need someone else to invade his space tonight, and Bitty doesn't need the humiliation of certain facts becoming obvious – for example, the precise nature of his esteem for his captain. 

He surreptitiously adjusts his pants, just in case. 

And just in time, because Jack suddenly closes the distance between them by sliding closer, until their arms touch. Bitty suppresses a gasp, and then looks down in shock as Jack reaches across with his left arm and holds his hand directly over the center of Bitty's chest. 

"This ... OK?" he asks, and Bitty nods, still not entirely sure what's going on, but hoping he isn't about to have a panic attack of his own. 

"Breathe ... normally," Jack says, resting his hand on Bitty's chest. 

_Easy for you to say_ , Bitty thinks desperately, although of course, it's not easy for Jack to say. That's why they're in this position, which Bitty is quickly coming to realize, is intended to help Jack slow his breathing by matching his respiration to Bitty's. 

Bitty closes his eyes and forces himself to drop his shoulders, which have been attempting to climb up over his ears. He focuses on the warmth of Jack's hand, trembling slightly on his chest, so large that it spans almost the whole of his solar plexus and his diaphragm. He breathes deeply and oh, the problem is, now he can smell Jack, too. Although, he can always smell Jack, he thinks, a warm, clean, male scent, underlying soap and fresh towels and a sharp metallic tang that Bitty now realizes is ice. 

Worse – or better – he can feel Jack, all around him, not just where they're touching, but in the room, and seemingly in himself, thanks to the laser-focus of Jack's attention, which is fixed entirely on Bitty. He's felt this before, during checking practice, but had his annoyance to protect him, along with his fear and exhaustion and increasingly, his eagerness to please Jack, to impress him, to earn his rare praise. 

The relationship is upended now. Jack needs him. Bitty is the one who knows what to do, how to breathe, how to be. He remembers some sitcom from his youth, a character talking about how, in romantic situations, he just thinks of baseball, the studio audience barking with knowing laughter while he looked at his mama, confused. 

"Never you mind," she said, switching off the set. "That's for older folks." 

He could think of hockey, but that would just lead him back to Jack, to his intensity, which is now directed at him. Jack's still gasping, forgetting how to exhale completely, and Bitty is failing him. He has to think. He has to stop thinking. He has to breathe deeply and calmly. He has to give Jack something he doesn't have: peace.

So he thinks about baking. He imagines pies, one after the other, popping out of the oven and into his oven mitts, and taking their place on an endless window sill to cool, while clean spring air flows into his kitchen through open windows, fluttering with curtains. He thinks of perfect crusts, barely touched, billowing softly into pie plates as if moved by the air itself, and every kind of filling, from apple to chocolate-pecan to key lime. He imagines lemon-buttermilk tarts and peach galettes and blackberry cobblers. He thinks about the place in his head, where he goes when everything's working, when the crusts make themselves and the filling is just right and the finished product is juicy and whole and easy to eat ... but a little messy, the way good pie should be. 

He barely realizes it when his breathing slows, when Jack stops gasping and choking. He opens his eyes, unsure of exactly how long he's had them closed, or how long they've been sitting there, breathing together in the Haus, which is so loud and full of revelers, it feels quiet and still, as if they're the only two people in it. 

And Jack is still looking at him, those ice-blue eyes wide and open in a way they usually aren't. As a general rule, you can't tell what Jack Zimmermann is thinking, unless he wants you to, Bitty thinks. But now he can tell. 

Jack looks at him like he's a game-winning goal. His breathing is steady now, although his face is still wet. Bitty's face is a little wet, too, he's realizing, as Jack's hand leaves his chest – its warmth burnt like a brand into Bitty's skin – and moves to Bitty's face. He brushes a tear off Bitty's cheek with his thumb.

"That for me, eh?" Jack asks. 

"Oh," Bitty says. "I. Huh. Didn't know I was. Hmm."

"You're sweet," Jack blurts, and colors suddenly, where a moment ago he'd been deathly pale, like a statue made of wax. 

"Bet you say that to all your teammates," Bitty chirps, shakily.

Jack smiles. "No," he says, "I don't."


End file.
